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Work and Pay American English Student
Work and Pay American English Student
Work and Pay American English Student
WORK
AND PAY
QrrkoD Scan to review worksheet
Expemo code:
1DEC-V3FA-192H
1 Warm up
1. How often do you get paid? Is this the same for most people in your country? Why/why not?
2. How do you receive information about your pay from the company you work for? What do you
do with that information?
3. How do you organize the money that you receive from your pay? Do you save any? What do you
spend most of it on?
2 Focus on vocabulary
2. net pay b. money you pay to the government from the money you
receive from working
3. deduction c. a document giving details of how much money you made and
what was taken out
4. earnings d. the money you receive from working after certain payments
have been made
5. pay stub e. money taken out of the pay you receive
Part B: Now decide how many syllables each of the terms from Part A have. Then with each noun of
more than one syllable, decide which syllable is stressed.
Part C: Complete the following sentences with the vocabulary from Part A.
1. I’ve been doing this job for a month now, so I received my first today and I can
see how much I made selling all of those computers.
2. Sylvie has been using the from her job to save up for a holiday and she’s been
working a lot of to get as much money as possible.
3. If I get this salary increase, my will be more than my is now.
4. I organize my money by what goes into my bank account. I don’t really think about the
that come out of my pay, such as .
a. Banker
c. Policeman
4 Listening comprehension
Read the following sentences and decide if they are true (T) or false (F).
5 Understanding benefits
Look at the following benefits that can come with a job. Read the article on page four with different
people talking about their benefits and write them in the correct gaps.
6 Reading comprehension
Complete the following table by putting a tick in the correct box.
1. has a child?
4. is putting away
money for an
expensive item?
6. had problems
because they had no
basic benefits?
7 Talking point
In pairs, discuss the following questions.
1. Which benefits do you have in your job?
2. Do you think an employer should offer sick pay? Why/why not?
3. Do you pay tax in your country? Do you know what percentage you pay? What is tax used for in
you country?
4. Do you use all of your benefits? Why/why not?
5. Can you earn commission in your job? Do you think earning commission is a good idea? Why/why
not? What are the positives and negatives of commission?
8 Extended activity/Homework
You should:
9 Transcript
Adam: Dad, I’ve just received this in my email and I don’t really understand it, to be honest.
Obviously, it’s from my new job, but I don’t know what all of the different parts mean.
Dad: Ah! Your first pay stub! Let’s have a look. (Pause) Not a bad start, Adam. OK, so this line
is your gross pay.
Adam: What does that mean?
Dad: That’s what you get paid before they start taking anything away. We’ll get to that. So
basically, if you take your salary and divide it by twelve, that’s what you get in your pay
stub each month.
Adam: Ah OK.
Dad: This column here is the deductions – everything they are taking out of your salary. This
one is your earnings – everything you make. Sad column, happy column. Got it?
Adam: (laughs) Yes.
Dad: So here in the earnings column, you also got your commission for the cars you sold. You
did really well for your first month.
Adam: Not bad, eh?
Dad: Not bad at all. You’ve also got your overtime here. That’s the extra hours you worked.
So, it looks as though you’ve made about 25% more than your basic pay.
Adam: Excellent.
Dad: But remember that amount is not going to be the same every month. So, when you are
planning your spending, plan based on this number, your net pay. That is the amount
which has gone into your bank account. That is what you will have to use for rent, buying
food, and anything else you do. My advice is to save at least 20% of that each month.
Even better, calculate your spending on your salary before the commission. Then if you
don’t make any sales, you don’t have to worry about having enough money to live on.
Adam: That doesn’t look like fun.
Dad: But what is fun is going on holiday, buying your own car, and buying a place to live. You
can’t do any of that if you don’t have money.
Adam: Fair enough. And what is this one? Tax?
Dad: That is the money the government takes out of your gross pay.
Dad: But what you do like is having police to protect you, roads for your cars to drive on,
buses and trains to get to work and people to call if your house is on fire. You live in a
society and that is the money you pay to help look after that society.
Adam: I hadn’t thought of it like that. Thanks, Dad. That’s really helpful.